


Knockin' On Heaven's Door

by SherlockWolf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean goes to Heaven, Gen, M/M, POV Dean Winchester, cause they're in heaven, everybody is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 11:36:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13030236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SherlockWolf/pseuds/SherlockWolf
Summary: Dean dies at the perfect age of fifty-five. Heaven isn't what he expects it to be, and it takes him time to enjoy it. He's got his family. Everybody, that is, except one.





	Knockin' On Heaven's Door

**Author's Note:**

> I've been dying to write about Dean's heaven for a while. I hope y'all enjoy it, and as always let me know if there are any grammar/spelling mistakes or wonkiness.

   Dying didn’t hurt. Watching the world fade to black didn’t hurt.

    Arriving in Heaven and realizing what it meant did.

    Dean Winchester, at a solid fifty-five years of age, had died. Permanently.

    This was it. Dean could be done, now. No more resurrection, no more deals, nothing. He and Sam had agreed long ago that they would let it be when it happened.

    Dean was sorry he’d been the first to go. Sam didn’t deserve to be alone.

The way it had happened was simple. He and Sam had been on a routine werewolf hunt. They’d split up, and the werewolf had gotten Dean. Not bitten him, but shredded him and ripped his heart from his body.

    He’d gone out the way he always knew he would: protecting the world from things that go _bump_ in the night.

    When he’d first arrived, he’d gone through his happy memories like he had once with Sam when they were searching for God. Dean was glad to see that the number of memories had gone up since his last visit.

    Then he’d found himself sitting in the Impala on the paved driveway in front of the Men of Letters bunker.

    It took some time for Dean to adjust to Heaven.

    First, the fact that the bunker was the setting of his heaven confused Dean. He’d expected to be at Bobby’s place, or even the Roadhouse, but never the bunker. Though, the place really had been a home to him—the first and last he’d ever had outside Baby. Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised him at all.

    His room was the way he’d left it, but it had more pictures hanging on the walls, some from his memories rather than actual cameras. His cassette collection was matched with a record collection and a beautiful wooden record-player. And the amount of plaid shirts in his closet had expanded exponentially.

    Second, the basic requirements of life were no longer needed. Aside from the cycle of night and day—as there were no seasons but steady, warm weather—there was no way to tell time. The dead didn’t need to sleep, rendering the light cycle an unnecessary comfort. And there was no flesh and blood to beg for food to keep them going.

    Third, Dean was alone. It wasn’t that he couldn’t see people, since he could hop in the Impala, wish to see a specific person, then drive for a while until he’d somehow warped into their heaven. (He was beginning to think of Baby as his own _Enterprise_ , but instead of taking him to planets she was taking him to heavens.) There were weekly game nights at Bobby’s, where Dean got to see Ellen, Jo, Mary, Rufus, Ash, Garth, Charlie, Jody, and Donna regularly.

    No, Dean was alone because he _lived_ alone. His family all had their own heavens, and Dean was merely a visitor in any of them, not a resident.

    This meant that Dean had to invent new ways to entertain himself. Sure, there were books and the TV, but Dean soon figured out that only films, shows, and books he’d already read, seen, or had at least heard of were present. Things he didn’t know about didn’t exist, which meant that there was only so much new material he could go through, and he didn’t want to spend eternity watching TV anyway.

    Among other things, Dean played one-person card games, practiced archery and shooting, fixed up new old cars, learned swordsmanship, learned how to make new alcoholic drinks, how to cook new meals, and how to draw cars so that they looked realistic. Soon, he’d decorated a decent amount of wall space in the bunker with sketches of classic cars. He’d even come up with a fancy signature to sign them with upon Charlie’s insistence.

    Dean’s favourite part of heaven for a long time was Charlie. He’d missed her more than he’d realized, and they spent a large part of each week hanging out. They shared their best-kept secrets with one another, and really became best friends. Sometimes, Charlie would invite Jody, Donna, and Jo over to the bunker and they’d have a “slumber party”. Dean loved every bit of it.

    Eventually, Sam showed up. Dean wasn’t surprised that Sam had his own heaven, which he shared with a dog and more often than not, Eileen. Ever since Sam had gone to Stanford, Dean knew that Sam would go his own way. In life he had, so it wasn’t a big deal that he’d followed the trend in death. They saw each other often enough at Bobby’s and random visits that Dean was satisfied.

    During one of the first visits to Sam’s house, which was a small two story full of family pictures, Dean asked his brother how he’d died. Sam, who’d made it to sixty-one, had died during a wendigo hunt with Claire and Alex. Dean had been intrigued to hear that Claire and Alex were still hunting. The last time Dean had seen them, they were considering abandoning the hunting life. Alex had met someone, and Claire had wanted to permanently escape. 

    Sam’s age at his death surprised Dean. In heaven, people appeared to themselves as whatever age they’d liked best, and appeared to others as the age they knew them best at. For example, Mary appeared to Dean as thirty-some odd years, while she saw herself in her twenties. The same went for Jody and Ellen. Funny enough, though, Jo, Sam, and Bobby looked the same to themselves and Dean. Dean wasn’t surprised that he looked as he had when he was exactly twenty-nine years old. He’d met a certain someone that year.

    Sam had been fifty-one when Dean died, meaning that an entire decade had passed on Earth since the older Winchester had been gone. Even though he knew that the passage of time in heaven was incomparable to that on Earth, Dean was unsettled by the information.

    It meant that he hadn’t seen Castiel in ten years.

    For the most part Dean avoided thinking about Cas, except for during late night confessions with Charlie. But sometimes thoughts of the angel would take over his mind, and he would obsess over his fear that he would never see Cas again. A few times he’d even tried to sleep away the dread, but that was impossible because it made him wonder how Cas dealt with everything he’d been through without sleep, which reminded him that Cas wasn’t there to ask.

    He and Sam had talked about Cas once since Sam’s arrival. Sam told him that Cas had continued to help Sam with hunting monsters and whatever big baddies tried to go after him. That Cas had been there for him when he missed his older brother. That the two had really, finally, become friends as Sam had always hoped. As far as Sam knew, Cas was still on Earth as a full-powered angel, kicking ass and taking names.

   The thought was comforting, yet sealed off the hope Dean had had. Cas was likely looking after Claire, and when she passed he would find some other humans to call family and forget all about the Winchesters. After all, Castiel was millions of years old. Friends dying was something he was adjusted to.

    Dean continued to distract himself with his new found hobbies and his family, but as time went on, his longing for the angel only grew. He wondered if Cas could still feel it, but deemed that thought ridiculous.

    Sometime later, Claire Novak found her way to Dean’s heaven. She’d gotten swept up in some demon-angel battle that had gone sour and resulted in her death. Dean had asked her, after she filled him in on _why_ the demons and angels were at it again, how Cas was. Claire said he’d been with her at the time of her death, and was leading the angels in the war. Dean wasn’t sure what to make of that.

    After Claire had been in Heaven for a while, something strange began to occur. Dean began to be stalked by crows.

    Heaven was full of animals and Dean had seen plenty of them. But animals were different than on Earth because they paid no attention to humans. Not even a cougar he’d once come across had given him a second glance.

    So, the fact that he was being harassed by crows was concerning.

    Dean chose the word ‘harassed’ specifically.

     Every time he would drive, walk, or sit by one, it would make every attempt it could to jump on him. And when there were multiple, Dean was swarmed. They would all dive at him in some crazy, twisted game of “try to touch the human”.

    The weirder thing was not a single one succeeded. It wasn’t because Dean managed to get out of the way. There was something repelling the birds, because they would turn away at the last second.

    None of the extended Winchester family could figure out a reason for the crows’ behaviour or the reason they couldn’t touch Dean. It was beyond weird, considering animals in Heaven had no reason to even interact with humans, and that Sam and everyone else could interact with his dog just fine.

    It went on for a long time. Alex and Patience had come to heaven, and Dean had even discovered Kevin and his mother by the time a crow managed to break the touch him.

    He and Jo were sitting on Bobby’s porch, laughing about a movie they’d watched the night before. Dean wasn’t aware that the bird was even there. He felt something hard and sharp tap his arm, then there was a rush of flapping wings as the crow jumped at his face and squawked right in his ear.

    Dean shook the thing away, yelling, while Jo just cackled at his misfortune. They watched the bird fly off across the junkyard, still squawking. When it passed the gate, it vanished, and Dean noticed a figure standing right where the crow had disappeared.

    A figure wearing a tan trench coat.

    Cas.

        Dean was off the porch faster than his feet could carry him. Cas met him halfway through the yard, and Dean spun the angel in a circle as he captured him in a bear-hug. Cas began to laugh, his body shaking as he wrapped his arms around Dean and his hands fisted the material of Dean’s shirt. Caught up in the moment, Dean grasped either side of the angel’s face and kissed him full on the lips. Cas’ laughter abated, then he began to kiss back, _hard._

    “Where’ve you been?” Dean whispered when they paused to breathe.

    He rested his head against Cas’, so that he could read those beautiful blue eyes that he’d missed so much. Cas was looking back at him as though he’d just found out that all the bees in the world were his friends: with pure joy.

    “Trying to find you.”

    The sound of Cas’ voice broke something in Dean, and his eyes filled with tears. He finally had Cas again. His heaven, his _paradise_ , was complete. 

    “Took you long enough.” Dean accused lightheartedly.

    “There were many complications.” Cas agreed.

    Then he kissed Dean again.

    After their reunion, Dean and Castiel became inseparable. Dean learned that Cas had used the crows as an “under the radar” gateway to him. All they needed to do was touch him, which had proved difficult since angels or angelic influence wasn’t supposed to be able to contact souls in Heaven. Cas had eventually found a way around that, and the crow that had managed to tap Dean’s arm had summoned Cas to his location. The method Cas had used to get to him meant that the other angels had no idea that he was in Heaven. It meant that he would never be taken from Dean.

    Dean found himself smack in the kind of domestic life he never could have had on Earth. He and Cas lived in the bunker together, where they created the schedule Dean imagined old married couples had. In the morning, Cas would make breakfast and coffee. Then they would longue around and read for a while, before they would come up with some adventure for the day.

    The exciting part about heaven, Dean discovered, was that he could go _anywhere_ , and not just to other people’s heavens. He and Cas went on “road trips” to Niagara Falls, the North and South poles, Madagascar, Tokyo, Belize, London, Paris, Moscow…on and on. They saw the Earth in different time periods, too. Cas would tell him stories, sometimes, when they went to ancient cities that he’d been to in their heydays.

    When they weren’t exploring the world, they would visit their family, or stay in the bunker doing various things. Dean finally had a fencing partner, and had to work to get to Cas’ level. Cas had no idea how to draw, so Dean taught him, and soon Cas was drawing life-like animals. Dean was even able to teach Cas how to fix up cars.

    In the evenings Dean would make dinner, then he and Cas would curl up on the couch in the living room and watch TV. Because Cas had received knowledge of all books, TV, and movies from Metatron, they could watch anything. Every night they watched a new movie and a few episodes of whatever TV show they were binging at the time.

    Then they would go to bed, and definitely _not_ sleep.

    Dean felt like he was, finally, in heaven.


End file.
